Friday, May 21, 2010

Teabagger: No soup for you

Just over half a century ago, four African American college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely requested service. They were refused. When told to leave, they stayed where they were.

What followed was an ever-widening mobilization that led to the desegregation of the lunch-counter six months later. The protest proved to be a tipping point for Jim Crow in the deep South. Four years later, on July 2, 1964, the US Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

Kentucky Teabagger Rand Paul,who just won the Republican senate primary in that state, thinks that was a bad idea. Private businesses, he believes, should be able to discriminate against anyone they choose.

He's proving to be an intense embarrassment to some of his fellow Republicans, who are still making valiant efforts to appeal to the mainstream. Good luck with that.